Now that Lara Croft – everyone's favourite 1990s, triangular-headed, uncomfortably-objectified archaeologist – has been reborn in a new Tomb Raider game, it is only a matter of time before someone decides to reinvigorate the bad old movie franchise as well. And so, with a heavy heart, I'm here to announce that a new Tomb Raider movie is already in its early stages.

According to CVG, Crystal Dynamics is working with GK Films to bring Croft and her inexplicable fondness for raiding tombs back to the big screen.

Anyone who's ever tried to sit through either of the previous two Tomb Raider films will no doubt feel a surge of anxiety. 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and 2003's Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life were, without any exaggeration, completely devoid of merit. They were respectively 100 and 117 minutes of Angelina Jolie doing a series of pointless backflips to a Bontempi cover version of Firestarter, making a noise like Liz Hurley choking on a shoelace. She was not so much a well-rounded character as a two-dimensional Tomby Spice designed solely to appeal to 14-year-old boys. If that's the precedent, then the world needs more Tomb Raider films like it needs to be kicked in the throat by a horse, frankly.

But surely Crystal Dynamics and GK Films know this, and know how to act on it. If the previous incarnation of Lara Croft was still popular, then the new game would still feature an angular woman walking into the wall of a blocky cave and making a bizarre orgasm noise. But it isn't. Times have moved on. The Lara Croft of the new game is a different beast altogether. She's younger. She's vulnerable. She's still learning her tomb-raiding craft. Sometimes she swears. At one point she blankly states "I hate tombs". For better or worse, she is the victim of attempted sexual assault. And, if this video is any indication, one sequence involves her repeatedly being impaled through the throat by a jaggedy spike.

In short, she isn't the imperiously bulletproof heroine of old. This immediately opens up a number of more intriguing cinematic possibilities. Even if the new film essentially ends up as a retread of Batman Begins or Casino Royale, as seems to be the case, it still has vastly more potential than anything that came before.

What's more, the personnel seems much more accomplished this time around. GK Films is responsible for Hugo, for example. Admittedly it was also the brains behind Dark Shadows and The Tourist, but nobody's perfect. With producers as prestigious as this and source material as improved as this – and if the film finds a sympathetic director and casts a lead with more humanity than Jolie – all might not be lost.

Ditch the pyrotechnics, do away with the blank-faced boy toys like Daniel Craig and Gerard Butler, knuckle down on what makes Lara Croft tick and Tomb Raider 3 might actually end up being quite decent. You know, if you're a 14-year-old boy.